Well this is a journey of Eric Steven Raymond about the unique software that is Linux and how people work on it.
It might not seem so mindblowing now, but back then the way Linux was being made was surely unique: a lot of people working over the internet, each with it’s own ideas about waht the software should do and everyone is allowed to modify it. Pretty crazy right?
This “# 2 Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).” is so true and most of the times people fail to realize it: your program ain’t better just because you typed all yourself, you just wasted your time by repeating what was made before because of your own ego of having all the control (i’ve encountered a few people that are like this).
Continuing with the lecture, i also found interesting how he said that you don’t understand the problem untill you implement the first solution. Sometimes we make ourselves think that we need to deploy silver bullets when in fact our solutions need to be constantly improved and sometimes thrown away completely to have a better start.
“# 5 When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it o: to a competent successor” WOW I never thougt about this but it’s true taht when you lose intrerst in something you just throw it away and forget about it so we must think abput other people that might be interested in it and provide them what we have to save them time and for it’s future developement.
All of it talks about how we should release, release, release. This is to correct our buggs and find other ones with the help of clients faster so our software becomes great relatively quickly. Also a reminder thrown around in the essay: KNOW YOUR DATA STRUCTURES. Also, value your users and their opinions because they might give you brilliant ideas that you never thought about before.
“# 18 To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you” THIS. Speaking for myself i find it very hard and burdensome to work on a project that is not interesting to me at all, not even for the money. The school projects I find the most annoying are the ones I half-ass and procrastinate more, the ones that i find interesting I try putting all my effort and I’m happy while doing them.
I liked this lecture very much cause it tells you about all the obstacles that one has to face in order to accomplish a good solution to a problem that didn’t seem that big in the first place. Also that OPEN-SOURCE RULES.
Computer Systems Engineering 